(gao.gov): The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) library network provides agency staff and the public with access to environmental information. A 2006 attempt by EPA to reorganize its network by consolidating libraries and making more materials and services available online caused concern among users, and in 2007, EPA put a moratorium on its reorganization plans. Congress requested that GAO report on the reorganization and has again requested a follow-up on these issues.

(nj.com): The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has released a statement clarifying its position after Google admitted that its Street View cars collected some private data from open wireless networks. The independent regulatory office, which deals with the Data Protection Act and Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, has had to speak out due to the furore written in the national press about how Google had collected passwords and emails..

(phoneplusmag.com): Gartner has identified what it believes will be the top 10 technologies that will impact the way we live and work over the next few years. The research firm recently released its annual list of Top 10 strategic technologies, which it defines as technology with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years..

(publishersweekly.com): Hoping to get a sense of how frontlist bestsellers are really performing in digital compared to print-and get a snapshot of the e-book market in the process-Publishers Weekly (PW) ran down the performance of a handful of current hit titles. To do so, it asked Amazon for a list of its bestselling Kindle editions over the past 30 days. PW then asked publishers for a ratio of print to e-book sales for their frontlist titles that are on that list. The numbers, which are for lifetime sales, show that, measured across all outlets, hardcovers are still driving units, though e-books represent an important, and widely varying, slice of total sales.

(arstechnica.com): A Policy Forum in the latest issue of journal Science look at what's become a significant problem in the sciences: enabling and maintaing unfettered access to large collections of scientific data. Although the report focuses on the biosciences, many of the problems it describes apply to other areas of research as well. The biggest problem, however, is fairly simple: there's no good mechanism for determining who pays for maintaining large amounts of data, which leaves existing repositories at risk of either duplicating efforts or losing funding entirely, with a resulting loss of data.